Paper, We Present the Media Gallery, a MHP-Based Ally Spend a Lot of Time Anyway: in Front of the TV

Media Gallery TV — View and Shop your Photos on Interactive Digital Television

Sabine Thieme Ansgar Scherp Melanie Albrecht, Susanne Boll CeWe Color AG Oldenburg R&D Institute for Department of Computing Science Oldenburg, Germany Computer Science Tools and Systems University of Oldenburg [email protected] (OFFIS), Oldenburg, Germany Oldenburg, Germany scherp@ofﬁs.de [email protected]

ABSTRACT MHP-based applications pick up the users where they usu- In this paper, we present the Media Gallery, a MHP-based ally spend a lot of time anyway: in front of the TV. In interactive multimedia application on digital TV. This ap- cooperation with CeWe Color [2], Europe’s largest photo- plication allows customers to view and order their digital finisher, we developed the interactive MHP application Me- photos and to order physical prints and fun products from dia Gallery. The Media Gallery allows the customers to these digital photos directly from TV. The Media Gallery upload and view their digital photos and to order physi- opens a new distribution channel and market opportunity cal prints and fun products, like t-shirts and mugs, directly for the photo finisher and a platform to comfortably view from the TV. With this application, the photo-finisher CeWe and order their digital images directly on their TV. Color achieves a new distribution channel and market opportunity arising from the technology of interactive applications Categories and Subject Descriptors: H.5.1 [Informa- on digital TV. tion Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems; H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Screen design; H.5.2 [User 2. DIGITAL VIDEO BROADCAST & THE Interfaces]: Input devices & strategies General Terms: Design, Human Factors, Management MULTMEDIA HOME PLATFORM Keywords: DVB, MHP, digital TV, interactive Today, the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) technology [1] multimedia application, photo service is already widespread and commonly used. The analogue broadcast signal is costly substituted by DVB, not only for 1. INTRODUCTION reasons of technical ability and higher efficiency (up to four digital TV programmes can be transmitted in one analogue Digital TV has recently reached many households in dif- channel), but due to the enormous potential DVB offers to ferent countries. Via cable, satellite or terrestrial transmis- build up a new market by providing support to transmit ar- sion channel the digital television signal is broadcasted, e. g., bitrary digital data, including interactive TV applications, using the Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) technology [1], instead of just common TV streams. The purpose of the and decoded by digital TV receivers like set-top boxes at the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) [4] is to provide a com- end user’s site. Set-top boxes not only allow for watching mon platform for receiving such digital data and executing digital TV, but more and more serve as a platform for inter- Java-based applications on digital TVs (see Figure 1). By active TV-based applications. The most promising platform this, a horizontal market for TV broadcast and communica- we find here today is the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) tion networks is enabled. [4], an open standard for interactive TV middleware. This platform enables to run Java applications on set-top boxes Application 1 Application 2 … Application n in a secure execution environment. These applications can Applications (EPG) (Home shopping) (Media Gallery) be broadcasted via DVB to the homes, like regular TV pro- MHP APIs grams, and be executed on the local set-top boxes. Con- System sequently, a middleware like MHP moves television from a Virtual machine passive TV consumption device to a highly interactive mul- software timedia platform. In combination with TV program and Application Operating system Loader a return channel (via modem or DSL), MHP provides an manager infrastructure towards a networked interactive multimedia Navigator Driver center. Running applications on a TV comes with specific requirements, especially to the user interface design, as it is Resources Conditional access Hardware no longer a mouse or keyboard but a remote control that is used to navigate and control the applications—a require- ment which has to be carefully addressed by the screen and Figure 1: MHP platform architecture interaction design.

The MHP is supposed to let applications look and used in Copyright is held by the author/owner. MM’05, November 6–11, 2005, Singapore. the same way on any MHP-enabled DVB receiver. The ap- ACM 1-59593-044-2/05/0011. plications are either broadcasted via DVB or can be loaded with the return channel. To allow Java applications to be implementing different alphanumeric input metaphors and executed by the MHP they must implement the so called evaluate their usability for interactive digital TV. Xlet-API. This API allows the MHP to control the aplica- tion’s lifecycle, enforces the memory limitations, gives access 5. ARCHITECTURE & IMPLEMENTATION to service information, and provides for drawing objects on The architecture of the Media Gallery and the client/server the screen, and gives access to communication resources. communication between the MHP application and the back- end server at CeWe Color are illustrated in Figure 3. The 3. THE MEDIA GALLERY Mediator module in the center of the client application con- With the advent of digital cameras, billions of digital pho- trols the various modules which are responsible for Media tos are shot. So far, the photo-finisher CeWe Color provides Gallery’s functionality. These modules realize the different a Home Photo Service [2] for their customers to order prints views of the Media Gallery such as Login, Slide(show), Cart, and other physical goods of their digital photos online and Thumb nail view and Order. have them delivered either by regular mail or to a photo shop near by. With our Media Gallery, this application moves to- Media Gallery Server wards digital TV, opening a new distribution channel and market opportunity for sharing and printing digital photos. Show Order Using the Media Gallery, a user can view digital photos that Media Order have been uploaded to a Web album or copied directly from Login Thumbs Cart Manage- & a digital camera onto the user’s set-top box. The Media ment Delivery Gallery allows to browse through the different albums, view- Mediator ing them as thumbnails, in full screen images as well as in user defined slideshow. Figure 2 depicts a screenshot of the XML protocol Online services Media Gallery, showing the thumbnail view. In this view, a communication layer Communication layer user can select pictures of an album for ordering prints. MHP XML protocol over HTTPS

Figure 3: The system’s architecture

The communication between the client and the photo finisher’s server is processed by a separate communication layer. The server’s configuration provides an HTTPS connection to exchange the application data in XML format. A provider- specific XML-protocol encapsulates the requests to the Me- dia Management as well as Order & Delivery interfaces at the server to retrieve the user’s albums and thumbnails but also to place orders.

6. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we presented our interactive MHP-application MeGa: Sitting comfortably with one’s friends and fam- Figure 2: Ordering prints from TV ily on the settees, users may now watch their pictures and order prints directly from TV. The Media Gallery repre- sents an interactive digital TV application of tomorrow and will be introduced as a commercial service by CeWe Color. 4. USER INTERFACE DESIGN ISSUES With the wider availability of MHP capable set-top-boxes providers such as CeWe Color can offer interactive photo Controlling interactive applications on digital TV by a re- services on the TV and use the techniques to put their eco- mote control is a challenging task and requires a very good nomical potential into practice. user interface and usage design. For using the Media Gallery, Acknowledgements: We kindly thank our students that have the user has to log in by entering his or her email address been developing and advancing the prototype C. Wegener, D. Thobe, and password. To provide help for inserting letters of the M. Hassler, A. Dromowicz, J. Schoof, M. Willkomm, C. Zimmermann, email address and password with a remote control, we cre- S. Heider, S. Stockfleth, and M. Pielot, as well as our project partner ated a T9-like1 text input metaphor as is it well known from CeWe Color. mobile phones. The four colored keys of the remote control are directly mapped to the main control functions of the Media Gallery such as activating the main menu, switching 7. REFERENCES to another screen, or displaying some help information. The [1] Digital Video Broadcasting. www.dvb.org, 2003. T9 input metaphor still seems to be quite uncomfortable, [2] CeWe Color AG. www.cewecolor.com, 2005. especially for elderly people. Therefore, we are currently [3] Technical Specification, ETSI TS 102 812 V1.2.1 (2003-06). Received from www.mhp.org, 2003. 1T9 is a Registered Trademark of Tegic Communications. [4] Multimedia Home Platform. www.mhp.org, 2003.